Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Chattering classes ride Comey to oblivion

President Trump will get the last laugh on the chattering class in Washington because they are clowns. Firing Comey showed you can fit about 100 of them in a Volkswagen, and still have room for J'Lo.

I don't think the story has legs. Comey is not J. Edgar and really comes off as a shifty eyed bureaucrat who was promoted because of who he knew, not what he knew. But the punditocracy insists this is big news.

"In the wake of Trump’s brazen power play, it’s time to go nuclear" screamed the headline in the Washington Post.

The author was Greg Sargent, a pedestrian Marxist whose reliably strident columns give you the latest wisdom of Washington wrapped in hysteria.From Sargent:

President Trump’s Tuesday Night Massacre — his firing of FBI director James Comey — was such a brazen power play in the context of the FBI’s ongoing Russia probe that even some Republicans are troubled by it. While many Democrats are now calling for a special prosecutor to handle the Russia affair, a handful of Republican senators are also suggesting the timing of the firing was suspect; that the firing raises questions about whether further political interference will compromise the FBI’s investigation; or that an independent investigative mechanism must now take over.

These questions about the future integrity of the Russia probe are all serious and legitimate. But if those Republicans are truly as alarmed as their rhetoric suggests, there are concrete things they can do in the Senate right now that could help compel either a full accounting of the Comey firing, or an independent Russia probe, or both. And Democrats, too, can ratchet up the tactics in a big way to try to force GOP leaders to relent on both of these fronts.

Tuesday night? It was the afternoon. Massacre? Democrats have screamed for the guy's head but now we are expected to forget all that pissing and moaning (as late as Monday night, which really was a night not an afternoon) about how Comey handed Trump the presidency.

Both the Post and the New York Times pressed the pedal to Watergate on their front pages today.From the New York Times:

In Trump’s Firing of James Comey, Echoes of Watergate

The hyper-ventilation echoes the cries of Trump's hotel in Washington triggering the emoluments clause in the Constitution. Or maybe the hyper-ventilation echoes the cries of ethics violation because Kellyanne Conway mocked the boycott of Ivanka's products by saying people should buy them. Or maybe hyper-ventilation echoes the cries of nepotism because his most trusted advisers are his eldest daughter and son-in-law.

If everything is Watergate, nothing is Watergate.

The media needs to watch that Watergate talk because it reminds people of how the media plotted to bring Nixon down. Given how reviled the media is today, that is not the swiftest of moves because people think all the media wants to do is tear down a Republican president again.

Which of course is true.

More from that Times story:

Not since Watergate has a president dismissed the person leading an investigation bearing on him, and Mr. Trump’s decision late Tuesday afternoon drew instant comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the so-called third-rate burglary that would eventually bring Nixon down.

In his letter firing Mr. Comey, the F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump made a point of noting that Mr. Comey had three times told the president that he was not under investigation, Mr. Trump’s way of pre-emptively denying that his action was self-interested. But in fact, he had plenty at stake, given that Mr. Comey had said publicly that the bureau was investigating Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential election and whether any associates of Mr. Trump’s campaign were coordinating with Moscow.

But wait, if Comey cleared President Trump three times, how can the Times say Comey was investigating the president?

Scott Adams of "Dilbert" fame had a different take on the being cleared.

That one odd sentence caused every media outlet to display the quote and talk about it, over and over. And when you focus on something, no matter the reason, it rises in importance in your mind. President Trump, the Master Persuader, made all of us think about the “not under investigation” part over, and over, and over.

The trick here is that members of Trump’s campaign might be the ones under investigation, not Trump himself. But that’s where the complexity of this topic is useful to the Master Persuader. The viewing public won’t make that distinction. All they will hear – over and over – is the “not under investigation” part.

I’ve taught you in this blog that the right amount of “wrong” is what captures our attention and creates a memory. Trump’s odd inclusion of the “not under investigation” line is just wrong enough that we can’t move past it. It is persuasion-perfect.

So in that way, it was like the time Trump said Obama wire-tapped him. The media took it literally, and in their attempts to prove him wrong, they wound up having to admit that the White House spied on the Trump campaign.

The big deal the media is making about Comey's departure is coming off as Washington insider desperation for a do-over in which Hillary gets elected president.

On November 8, 2016, the American people said, "Trump the Establishment!"

Now read the book that explains how and why the press missed this historic the election.

I don't like taking points from either party, but a least the Republicans seem to temper their remarks. The Democrats seemingly couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it; so is it in their DNA?

COMEY LOVED HILLARY. HE LET HER OFF THE HOOk FOR ESPIONAGE He HAD NO INTENTION to investigat e the unmasking of american citizens by Ms.Rice? or others in Obama's administration or NSA abuses of power. His record on preventing home grown terror was poor,,,he seemed a preening fool on t.v

Don't forget, when Cowardly Jim Comey was the federal DA for Southern New York, he shut down investigations into the campaign financing of Shillary's sentate run in 2000, but threw the book, the bookcase and the whole library at Martha Stewart. He definitely loved the Killary Beast.

Ya gotta hand it to President Trump. Liberal heads are exploding in a chain reaction from coast to coast. Scott Adams' take on it was to the point. A "cognitive dissonance cluster bomb." Perfect. The mental image I get of the MSM is that they are a bunch of monkeys in a cage with iron bars. President Trump walks up to the cage, stares at them for a minute, then says, "Boo!" The monkeys immediately go crazy, screeching, jumping up and down, and flinging poo in all directions while President Trump walks quietly away with a small grin on his face. Yep. That's my impression of the MSM. - Elric

FAKE NEWS FOLLIES OF 2017

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I live in Poca, West Virginia, with my lovely wife of 40 years, Lou Ann. I am an Army veteran and Cleveland State graduate. I retired after 40 years as a newspaperman. In 2016, I published "Trump the Press," which drew rave reviews at Power Line and Instapundit.